My research focuses on the acquisition of language: how children acquire the meanings of words (lexical semantics) and how they learn to use and understand these words in phrases and sentences (syntax). I study the structure of the adult grammar in order to inform hypotheses about the nature of the target language that the child is acquiring, and I investigate the cognitive biases and learning strategies that children bring to the task of language learning. I make use of computational modeling techniques to formalize my hypotheses about the process of acquisition, and I employ methods of experimental psychology to test these hypotheses.

Medina, Tamara Nicol. 2007. Learning which verbs allow object omission: Verb semantic selectivity and the implicit object construction. (doc) Dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.